Meditation 5.13.15

To proclaim God as the God who is near, as Jesus did, is to put an end to the idea of heaven as God’s distant dwelling place and to reverse the relation of God and heaven. It is not that where heaven is, there is God, but rather where God is, there is heaven. Make what you can of that! And let us stop speaking of heaven altogether, if we cannot execute this change in thinking. To put it rather foolishly for once: It is better to lose heaven than to lose the nearness of God! For “Our Father, who art in heaven” means precisely “Our Father, who art present here on earth.”